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8:59 a.m., Dec. 16, 2009----Michael Middaugh, associate provost for institutional effectiveness at the University of Delaware, is familiar with both sides of the desk when it comes to accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. He has recently been elected chairperson of the commission, and he also serves on the UD accreditation steering committee to prepare for accreditation in 2011.
Middaugh also has written a book, Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: Demonstrating Institutional Effectiveness, based on 25 years of experience work in the field of institutional research at UD and also his work with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
The Commission on Higher Education (CHE) is responsible for the accreditation of more than 500 institutions of higher education from community colleges to research universities in Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, plus a number of institutions in Europe, the Middle East and other areas of the world that have sought CHE accreditation. “I was even sent to Australia to visit a branch campus there,” Middaugh said.
A mostly volunteer organization, the Commission on Higher Education requires time and effort from its members but performs the essential service of reviewing colleges and universities to assure that they fulfilling their mission and their goals, Middaugh said.
The commission has two important volunteer committees -- one that reviews accreditation reports and determines the accreditation status of institutions, and another that follows through on required follow-up activity once the accreditation determination is made by the commission
Still another committee reviews the periodic review reports that are submitted by institutions at the five year point between self study and evaluation team visits.
“The Commission on Higher Education is the gatekeeper for the federal government and financial aid. Without accreditation, a school is ineligible for Title IV funding from the government and cannot survive, and, in spite of our best efforts, this does occasionally happen,” Middaugh said.
“The Commission on Higher Education has changed as higher education has evolved. Our goal is institutional effectiveness,” Middaugh added. “It's not enough for a school to say our students are successful; we want evidence to support that.”
An important goal is transparency, Middaugh said, noting there is information about each accredited school available on the Commission on Higher Education Web site.
“When an evaluation team visits a school, they look at evidence provided by the institution with respect to the extent that they are in compliance with each of the 14 accreditation standards developed in 2002 by the CHE member institutions themselves,” Middaugh said.
Middaugh explained the team reviews documents and financial statements, interviews students, reviews student grades and portfolios of work and uses many other criteria. The accrediting process is an essential contribution to higher education, he said.
Middle States Commission on Higher Education is a member of the national coalition, the Council of Regional Accreditation Commissions.
Middaugh wrote Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: Demonstrating Institutional Effectiveness because he saw a need for a book that spelled out how schools could plan, achieve and substantiate institutional effectiveness in today's educational world. “It is essentially a road map for educators,” Middaugh said.
John Cavanaugh, chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, wrote, “Only Michael Middaugh, the unquestioned national leader in this field, could write such a lucid overview of how to make institutional assessment and planning really work as a tool rather than as a tedious requirement.”
Middaugh cites the University of Delaware extensively in the book as an example of the self-assessment process and institutional effectiveness.
One of the projects Middaugh developed was the Delaware Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity, which is widely acknowledged to be the best data collection tool for measuring productivity, instructional costs and externally funded scholarship, with close to 600 four-year colleges and universities participating in the study.
As Middaugh writes in Planning and Assessment in Higher Education, the book was written “to provide institutions with strategies for reaching a fundamentally better understanding of the institution's effectiveness” and also “the capacity to better communicate with accrediting bodies.”
Middaugh received a bachelor's degree from Fordham University, a master's degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and doctorate from State University of New York at Albany.
He is the author of Understanding Faculty Productivity: Standards and Benchmarks for Colleges and Universities. He has served as past president of the Society for College and University Planning and also the Association for Institutional Research.
Article by Sue Moncure